It must be something written into the constitution, it is old. Though very much revered. I’ve always thought appreciatively of it in historical terms. When it all gets turned over to the amazons and the ups we will miss the good old days of honor and duty one thought of in the USPS. Fast mail at a great rate.
You’re so kind! I am a follower of AFR. They’ve been all over this for some time now. I have long been writing and cajoling. But I very much appreciate the suggestion. Thank you.
He is Louis DeJerk to me. Our postman very much agreed. Almost daily he’d share the latest fiasco to further destroy the USPS, if it weren’t so tragic it could be another comedic episode on I Love Lucy. That screwball, yes he was that screwy in undoing what was working…reminded me of the Opening scene in the tragicomedy of a conman pseudo business man “gliding Down”, an escalator, to announce a run for President. An ominous clue, the guy is exhibiting a major Tell, smirking all the way.
Gonna make money off the suckers you betcha. Gloating,as he’s floating down, down at all the great schemes his guy’s like Louis, an joy at all three ca jing, ca jing will
The Great Gatsby is a wonderful book. I taught it for many years too in colleges. And I was thriled by
how much my students loved the book: its sad, elegiacal mood, Daisy and Tom's utter crassness, and Gatsby' and Nick's naive but beautiful belief that America can be still something wonderful for all our faults and mistakes. I think of the many rich people who support Donald Trump not because they think he is a good person or a great leader, but because they are afraid of the "people," whether from across the border, or over the bridge or from the other side of the tracks. They fear losing their clout, and being laughed at and ignored as they are revealed as shallow and clueless as Tom Buchanan is. So they gather in their enclaves from Palm Spring to Palm Beach and tell each other they are better than the rest of us and what I don't get is so many rural and lower to middle class citizens and students, like the ones I taught years ago in rural Iowa and North Carolina, support a party led and dominated by men and women who would never invite them to Mar-A-Lago or let them in their gated communities. You are working hard to break that spell and that is one of the major reasons why I support your work and wish you all the best. Excellent work.
You know, back in the '50s when I was a lad I had two friends, one of whose father was a CEO. Another friend's father was a high-ranking executive in a large corporation. Their families did not live apart from the community. My friends and I attended the local public high school. Yes, their homes were in a better section than ours and were much nicer. They had two late model cars to our one older one. But there were no gated communities where we lived in the Chicago suburbs, and my friends always gathered at our modest home rather than theirs, and we are still friends to this day. America has perhaps grown richer, but in many ways much poorer.
Thank you Jess. I did not read Gatsby. But you've shown me/us the madness of these people with more money than sense, let alone any feeling for their fellow citizens, and the rule of law.
I will keep writing postcards to voters, and donating to get Democrats elected. I believe in the midst of the mishegas (mess) created by these sickos we've been blessed with President Biden; so absolutely worthy of our trust and the office he holds -- and I am certain we have a good future with him for another 4 years. I think BELIEVING IN OUR STRENGTH and our goal to win House, Senate and Presidency -- we can persevere, match the moment and over-write the nightmare to a positive conclusion.
Also taught this novel for 20 years. It is a perfect example of our times today. Careless people destroying everything they touch with no care for whom they hurt. Great post.
Oh no! Betsy DeVos has lots of help in working to destroy public education. Legislators all over the country are on the "choice" train. NC is a prime example. They damage public schools by withholding necessary funds, so that all NC students can have an equitable education. Then they complain that public schools are deficient ( because they FAILED to do their job.) They attack teachers as deficient and public colleges of education as deficient to train teachers without a shred of evidence. They cut teacher pay, then later brag about raising teachers salaries. All their actions are projections, which are confessions of their crimes. 😡Argh!!!
I’m a retired educator in NC. It really is maddening, isn’t it?
Over the years I’ve watched NC go from a reasonably progressive state that truly valued public education, to a backward looking, horribly divided state that is controlled by greedy ideologues who are able to enlist the help of equally greedy, morally & ethically bereft suck-ups & wannabes (Tricia Cotham, anyone?) to solidify their pernicious hold on this state.
Public education, and therefore this entire state, is in serious jeopardy. It’s maddening….and very sad.
I'd also like to jump on the NC education train. I moved to NC back when it was lauded for its public schools and institutes of higher education. Now we are hanging at the bottom for public school funding, teacher pay, etc.
But, unbelievably, it could get worse if we elect Michele Morrow (R) as Superintendent of Public Instruction. Her goals are similar to those of Betsy Devos - destroy the Department of Education from within although I think for potentially different motives. She's a "Christian" fundamentalist home schooler who has been quoted as saying that public schools are "Socialist indoctrination centers"
I believed that NC still has some "normal" GOP voters, but if we do they all stayed away from voting in the March 5th primary. Case in point Mark Robinson and Michele Morrow!
Morrow defeated the GOP incumbent, Catherine Truitt, in the primary and it appears that Truitt tacitly endorsed Democrat Mo Green at a recent educational forum they both attended. (Morrow was MIA for the event).
Oh, Michelle Morrow is something to behold, isn’t she? I had very little respect for Truitt, but at least she’s not a knuckle-dragging idiot. Mo Green would get us back to a semblance of normalcy. I guess my hope is that Morrow & Robinson’s ridiculous extremism will have a filter down effect on the legislative races ….. that’s my HOPE, anyway.
Mark Robinson's campaign for governor just blows my mind. I believe he is the most flawed state-wide candidate I have seen in years. The education superintendent here in SC is a Christian nationalist and during her campaign it was pointed out that according to the laws of our state, the superintendent of education must have a masters degree...whoops! Bob Jones University, clearly lays out the masters program on their website, being an 18 month curriculum, she got her masters online in 4 months, and won a fairly close race and has begun rolling back all the progress of the last 10 years. Don't get me started on vouchers.
First of all, I’d use much stronger language than “flawed” to describe Robinson, but I appreciate what you’re saying.
And I’m very sorry to hear that about your state superintendent situation. I have been impressed from my vantage point to your north with how much better the public school system in SC has become over the past decade or so …. at least in comparison to NC. It takes blood, sweat, tears, and time to build something solid & good, but it takes only one “arsonist” with just a little fuel and a match to burn it down in no time. I hope your system can survive the flames.
And we could probably raise a mighty noise in a joint rant about vouchers …. or “opportunity scholarships,” as they are so quaintly labeled in NC. But, like you, it just raises my BP to unsafe levels when I think about what is going on with that.
Thank you for this wonderful post. You are a voice of insight and hope crying in our great wilderness, but what a voice you have. Your understanding, your powers of observation, your great heart, and your way with words are so what we need in these times. Thank you for being such a wonderful example of what transpires in public schools, of the kinds of intelligent, thinking, informed, and dedicated teachers our children can and do encounter there. I’m so glad you’re among us and choose to speak and write and act based on what you see and experience in the rural south today. You give me (and I think a lot of other people) hope that there is a future if we work to build it.
Excellent post, Jess. The threat is very real. The way I see it, they can only break us if we let them. Now, I can only do what one person can do, but I’ll be goddamned if I let that happen without a fight.
Careless people that I think actually enjoy the breaking and seeing the damage that results. They come for the show and then drift along to the next opportunity to do someone harm.
Just an amazing piece of writing, bringing all the pain and frustration of watching careless people take and take and take, and moving on, completely uncaring. Thank you.
I am shivering and my blood has run cold. Jess, you are absolutely correct. Right on target. I taught The Great Gatsby too and I see what you see. Careless and despicable people. Bar the Capitol doors “agin um!
Jess, wonderful to see all of your notes and keen insights from a Missouri teacher.
I was born in Missouri, in St Louis, at the St. Louis Zoo. ( That's what I'm told, I don't remember . . . ) My Missouri public school teachers were extraordinary. Still hard to believe, looking back. After college in NJ, I moved to the Bay Area for grad school and have spent almost all of my years out west, now back in the Bay Area.
--
My public mission, for ten years, has been to get our progressive leaders to talk about our wealth.
Not happening. It's maddening, and embarrassing.
Sam Clemens wrote 'first, get your facts,' or something like.
We have $147 Trillion in net household wealth, as of the New Year, according to the quarterly voluminous compilations and tabulations from this radical, fringe, extremist group with cells in all of our leading financial cities, which styles itself 'the Federal Reserve.' Hah. We would know.
What we hear about is our debt, and only our debt, the source often braying the number. Our federal debt is approaching $35 Trillion, tracked by the Fed and the Treasury. Because all we hear about is our debt, with traitorous lying threats to declare 'insolvency,' a reasonable voter could only be expected to pass out when they are told that, in fact, we are not in debt. Gates, Buffett, Musk, Bezos etc have credit cards and loans. They are not in debt.
$147 T v $35 T -- one is bigger. A lot bigger.
--
Again, most succinctly: We are *not* in debt.
This fact is so opposite to everything that regular people are told, that few are able to even process it, in my experience. Everybody knows. I write to Congress about our wealth, I get a form letter, 'we know you are concerned about our excessive federal debt.' No.
Our wealth, as tracked by the Fed, has grown about $70 Trillion in the past 10 years. Our debt has grown about $17 Trillion, including good debt [ education, research, and infrastructure and more ], emergency debt [ Covid ], and corrupt debt [ tax breaks for zillionaires ].
What does this mean? A lot of things, some of which you covered well and artfully in your essay.
One thing that comes to mind is that the wealthiest, the top 1% in particular, but also the top 10%, are sticking it to the rest of us. This gets tricky, because it 'only' takes about $1.5 million to be counted in the top 10%, and many of those are simply retirees, including working stiff retirees.
There is a lot of talk about income, and there should be, but it is clearest to see what has been happening by talking about wealth.
For some light on the horizon, we can see our growing wealth as approaching a better life, on the average, for all of us. $2 million is a lifetime of money in the geographic majority of our country, $80 thousand a year by the 4% retirement / wealth maintaining rule. $3 million is a lifetime of money in the rest of our country, $120 thousand a year. Not rich? A household wouldn't have to work to receive the median income. That's a good definition of rich, where I come from, in my country. But yes, it should be more. And it will be, if we can only hang on and maintain our progress.
Our wealth has been doubling every 10 years or so. ( 7.2% growth per year by the rule of 72 ) $147 Trillion is about $1.1 million per household, so it is not as extreme as it sounds at first.
But first we have to reset this whole conversation, loudly I think, and realize and claim and proclaim at least the fundamental, foundational, financial facts of our national situation, and demand that our representatives start acting like it -- or change those representatives! Soon! We need for them to invest in our country, as Bernie and Joe and Elizabeth and Nancy and so many others in Congress planned, and even *passed* the big infrastructure bill, the best one, blocked by all Rs and 2 Dems.
If we pay a working family a dollar, a rich guy gets it almost immediately. So rich guys should be spending all of their time putting people to work. Don't see it, so it's up to us, the 90% and even the 99%. There's a lot of work that needs doing -- we all know it, we can see it everywhere we go, and in all the reporting that is still getting done, somehow, every day.
But if the federal debt is so bad, we could pay it, tomorrow! Let's hear that on the floor of the Senate and the House, instead of the disgusting competition to make the most sniveling obsequious obeisances to the Feudalist Society. Simple. 'Pay it!' ( In fact, Treasuries don't work that way, and probably shouldn't, but the statement makes the point, for me . . . )
thanks again, hope this made sense and supports your mission! -- cheers, b.rad
I'm with you, Jess. They are careless people in the Republican Party. I think that the author of The Great Gatsby had two meanings in mind when he included that word in his indictment of his characters: careless as in thoughtless about whether what they did would cause pain and careless as in without a conscience, without empathy for other humans because they really don't care about what pain they caused. We are watching the making of fascists who will participate in anything their sick political party leaders advocate and who will like what they're doing as they do it.
Let’s not forget an “extension” of Betsy DeVos making a mess, not just here, but abroad in foreign countries. Her brother Eric “Blackwater” Prince has made his mark of fuckery by destroying humanity as well. Prince. What an appropriate and sanctimonious sir name to cradle such destructive behavior. The pride that must be carried in that family can only be equaled by the self-preserving lies used to cover up their actions, but isn’t that the Merican way?
I met Betsy DeVos. There are only two other times I can remember my blood running cold after making eye contact with satan incarnate…meeting Rick Scott and Don Rumsfeld.
Our country has a long and distinguished history of being in the shitter. Maddow’s book prequel illustrates that very well. Being the pessimistic optimist I am though, not sure we are going to recover from this one.
We will see…fortunately there are people like Jess who are more hopeful than I.
Thanks for affirming that in person meeting of infamous Betsy de Vos made your blood run cold, and the chilling awareness of no soul behind the empty eyes, being in presence of evil. Even without meeting her, it was radiating from her photos, film via tv interviews, words in print also gave chills. Her brother, a creepy darkness of the underworld also.
I just want to add Louis DeJoy to the list of wrecking balls,in my opinion he has royally screwed the USPS🤬🤬
….And somehow he is STILL in office!!!!!
I don't understand why his office is so sacrosanct that even the president can't simply remove him. What keeps him on his throne?
There's a federal law making the Postal Service independent. The president doesn't have the authority to fire him.
https://www.federaltimes.com/federal-oversight/2022/08/24/can-biden-fire-us-postmaster-general-louis-dejoy/
It must be something written into the constitution, it is old. Though very much revered. I’ve always thought appreciatively of it in historical terms. When it all gets turned over to the amazons and the ups we will miss the good old days of honor and duty one thought of in the USPS. Fast mail at a great rate.
Leslie. You can write here
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/protect-vote-by-mail-from-louis-dejoy-now2/?source=group-common-cause&referrer=group-common-cause&redirect=https://secure.actblue.com/donate/cc-help-your-action-go-further-letters&link_id=0&can_id=055343633712997bcf8f7658706fe72b&email_referrer=email_2297515___from_2838003___subject_2838000&email_subject=protect-the-usps&refcodeEmailReferrer=email_2297515___from_2838003___subject_2838000
You’re so kind! I am a follower of AFR. They’ve been all over this for some time now. I have long been writing and cajoling. But I very much appreciate the suggestion. Thank you.
Yeah, he is a POS! His goal is to privatize all postal services.
He is Louis DeJerk to me. Our postman very much agreed. Almost daily he’d share the latest fiasco to further destroy the USPS, if it weren’t so tragic it could be another comedic episode on I Love Lucy. That screwball, yes he was that screwy in undoing what was working…reminded me of the Opening scene in the tragicomedy of a conman pseudo business man “gliding Down”, an escalator, to announce a run for President. An ominous clue, the guy is exhibiting a major Tell, smirking all the way.
Gonna make money off the suckers you betcha. Gloating,as he’s floating down, down at all the great schemes his guy’s like Louis, an joy at all three ca jing, ca jing will
get diverted. Gotcha. $$$$$$
Yep. We just today, May 13, received a check mailed to us on the 3rd. Inexcusable.
I really don’t understand why Biden has let him keep his job.
Rachel Maddow needs to have you on national.
Thank you, friend!
AGREE👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
The Great Gatsby is a wonderful book. I taught it for many years too in colleges. And I was thriled by
how much my students loved the book: its sad, elegiacal mood, Daisy and Tom's utter crassness, and Gatsby' and Nick's naive but beautiful belief that America can be still something wonderful for all our faults and mistakes. I think of the many rich people who support Donald Trump not because they think he is a good person or a great leader, but because they are afraid of the "people," whether from across the border, or over the bridge or from the other side of the tracks. They fear losing their clout, and being laughed at and ignored as they are revealed as shallow and clueless as Tom Buchanan is. So they gather in their enclaves from Palm Spring to Palm Beach and tell each other they are better than the rest of us and what I don't get is so many rural and lower to middle class citizens and students, like the ones I taught years ago in rural Iowa and North Carolina, support a party led and dominated by men and women who would never invite them to Mar-A-Lago or let them in their gated communities. You are working hard to break that spell and that is one of the major reasons why I support your work and wish you all the best. Excellent work.
You know, back in the '50s when I was a lad I had two friends, one of whose father was a CEO. Another friend's father was a high-ranking executive in a large corporation. Their families did not live apart from the community. My friends and I attended the local public high school. Yes, their homes were in a better section than ours and were much nicer. They had two late model cars to our one older one. But there were no gated communities where we lived in the Chicago suburbs, and my friends always gathered at our modest home rather than theirs, and we are still friends to this day. America has perhaps grown richer, but in many ways much poorer.
Read "Rules of Civility" (Amor Towles). Another class-focused mind bender. I'd love to hear your thoughts ...
Yep. Saw it as a play book.
Thank you Jess. I did not read Gatsby. But you've shown me/us the madness of these people with more money than sense, let alone any feeling for their fellow citizens, and the rule of law.
I will keep writing postcards to voters, and donating to get Democrats elected. I believe in the midst of the mishegas (mess) created by these sickos we've been blessed with President Biden; so absolutely worthy of our trust and the office he holds -- and I am certain we have a good future with him for another 4 years. I think BELIEVING IN OUR STRENGTH and our goal to win House, Senate and Presidency -- we can persevere, match the moment and over-write the nightmare to a positive conclusion.
Thank you!!!
Just finished a batch of postcards, will post them tomorrow and ask for more!
Also taught this novel for 20 years. It is a perfect example of our times today. Careless people destroying everything they touch with no care for whom they hurt. Great post.
Fantastic literary analogy! You are 100% correct about Ms DeVos single-handedly destroying public education in America.
Oh no! Betsy DeVos has lots of help in working to destroy public education. Legislators all over the country are on the "choice" train. NC is a prime example. They damage public schools by withholding necessary funds, so that all NC students can have an equitable education. Then they complain that public schools are deficient ( because they FAILED to do their job.) They attack teachers as deficient and public colleges of education as deficient to train teachers without a shred of evidence. They cut teacher pay, then later brag about raising teachers salaries. All their actions are projections, which are confessions of their crimes. 😡Argh!!!
I’m a retired educator in NC. It really is maddening, isn’t it?
Over the years I’ve watched NC go from a reasonably progressive state that truly valued public education, to a backward looking, horribly divided state that is controlled by greedy ideologues who are able to enlist the help of equally greedy, morally & ethically bereft suck-ups & wannabes (Tricia Cotham, anyone?) to solidify their pernicious hold on this state.
Public education, and therefore this entire state, is in serious jeopardy. It’s maddening….and very sad.
I'd also like to jump on the NC education train. I moved to NC back when it was lauded for its public schools and institutes of higher education. Now we are hanging at the bottom for public school funding, teacher pay, etc.
But, unbelievably, it could get worse if we elect Michele Morrow (R) as Superintendent of Public Instruction. Her goals are similar to those of Betsy Devos - destroy the Department of Education from within although I think for potentially different motives. She's a "Christian" fundamentalist home schooler who has been quoted as saying that public schools are "Socialist indoctrination centers"
https://open.substack.com/pub/politicsnc/p/and-you-thought-mark-robinson-was?r=1aiy5t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I believed that NC still has some "normal" GOP voters, but if we do they all stayed away from voting in the March 5th primary. Case in point Mark Robinson and Michele Morrow!
Morrow defeated the GOP incumbent, Catherine Truitt, in the primary and it appears that Truitt tacitly endorsed Democrat Mo Green at a recent educational forum they both attended. (Morrow was MIA for the event).
https://open.substack.com/pub/politicsnc/p/republican-superintendent-of-public?r=1aiy5t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Oh, Michelle Morrow is something to behold, isn’t she? I had very little respect for Truitt, but at least she’s not a knuckle-dragging idiot. Mo Green would get us back to a semblance of normalcy. I guess my hope is that Morrow & Robinson’s ridiculous extremism will have a filter down effect on the legislative races ….. that’s my HOPE, anyway.
I hope it spurs voter turnout and volunteerism at least!
Mark Robinson's campaign for governor just blows my mind. I believe he is the most flawed state-wide candidate I have seen in years. The education superintendent here in SC is a Christian nationalist and during her campaign it was pointed out that according to the laws of our state, the superintendent of education must have a masters degree...whoops! Bob Jones University, clearly lays out the masters program on their website, being an 18 month curriculum, she got her masters online in 4 months, and won a fairly close race and has begun rolling back all the progress of the last 10 years. Don't get me started on vouchers.
First of all, I’d use much stronger language than “flawed” to describe Robinson, but I appreciate what you’re saying.
And I’m very sorry to hear that about your state superintendent situation. I have been impressed from my vantage point to your north with how much better the public school system in SC has become over the past decade or so …. at least in comparison to NC. It takes blood, sweat, tears, and time to build something solid & good, but it takes only one “arsonist” with just a little fuel and a match to burn it down in no time. I hope your system can survive the flames.
And we could probably raise a mighty noise in a joint rant about vouchers …. or “opportunity scholarships,” as they are so quaintly labeled in NC. But, like you, it just raises my BP to unsafe levels when I think about what is going on with that.
Despicable. What's wrong with NC voters?
Mind blowing, isn’t it?
Jess,
Thank you for this wonderful post. You are a voice of insight and hope crying in our great wilderness, but what a voice you have. Your understanding, your powers of observation, your great heart, and your way with words are so what we need in these times. Thank you for being such a wonderful example of what transpires in public schools, of the kinds of intelligent, thinking, informed, and dedicated teachers our children can and do encounter there. I’m so glad you’re among us and choose to speak and write and act based on what you see and experience in the rural south today. You give me (and I think a lot of other people) hope that there is a future if we work to build it.
Betsy de Vos always reminded me of the embodiment of the cartoon character Cruella de Ville. The more I learned about her the more apt that became.
Excellent post, Jess. The threat is very real. The way I see it, they can only break us if we let them. Now, I can only do what one person can do, but I’ll be goddamned if I let that happen without a fight.
Careless people that I think actually enjoy the breaking and seeing the damage that results. They come for the show and then drift along to the next opportunity to do someone harm.
This essay is platinum
15 hearts!
Just an amazing piece of writing, bringing all the pain and frustration of watching careless people take and take and take, and moving on, completely uncaring. Thank you.
I am shivering and my blood has run cold. Jess, you are absolutely correct. Right on target. I taught The Great Gatsby too and I see what you see. Careless and despicable people. Bar the Capitol doors “agin um!
Jess, wonderful to see all of your notes and keen insights from a Missouri teacher.
I was born in Missouri, in St Louis, at the St. Louis Zoo. ( That's what I'm told, I don't remember . . . ) My Missouri public school teachers were extraordinary. Still hard to believe, looking back. After college in NJ, I moved to the Bay Area for grad school and have spent almost all of my years out west, now back in the Bay Area.
--
My public mission, for ten years, has been to get our progressive leaders to talk about our wealth.
Not happening. It's maddening, and embarrassing.
Sam Clemens wrote 'first, get your facts,' or something like.
So here is my web page with source links to our wealth <https://uswealthclock.com>
We have $147 Trillion in net household wealth, as of the New Year, according to the quarterly voluminous compilations and tabulations from this radical, fringe, extremist group with cells in all of our leading financial cities, which styles itself 'the Federal Reserve.' Hah. We would know.
What we hear about is our debt, and only our debt, the source often braying the number. Our federal debt is approaching $35 Trillion, tracked by the Fed and the Treasury. Because all we hear about is our debt, with traitorous lying threats to declare 'insolvency,' a reasonable voter could only be expected to pass out when they are told that, in fact, we are not in debt. Gates, Buffett, Musk, Bezos etc have credit cards and loans. They are not in debt.
$147 T v $35 T -- one is bigger. A lot bigger.
--
Again, most succinctly: We are *not* in debt.
This fact is so opposite to everything that regular people are told, that few are able to even process it, in my experience. Everybody knows. I write to Congress about our wealth, I get a form letter, 'we know you are concerned about our excessive federal debt.' No.
Our wealth, as tracked by the Fed, has grown about $70 Trillion in the past 10 years. Our debt has grown about $17 Trillion, including good debt [ education, research, and infrastructure and more ], emergency debt [ Covid ], and corrupt debt [ tax breaks for zillionaires ].
What does this mean? A lot of things, some of which you covered well and artfully in your essay.
One thing that comes to mind is that the wealthiest, the top 1% in particular, but also the top 10%, are sticking it to the rest of us. This gets tricky, because it 'only' takes about $1.5 million to be counted in the top 10%, and many of those are simply retirees, including working stiff retirees.
There is a lot of talk about income, and there should be, but it is clearest to see what has been happening by talking about wealth.
For some light on the horizon, we can see our growing wealth as approaching a better life, on the average, for all of us. $2 million is a lifetime of money in the geographic majority of our country, $80 thousand a year by the 4% retirement / wealth maintaining rule. $3 million is a lifetime of money in the rest of our country, $120 thousand a year. Not rich? A household wouldn't have to work to receive the median income. That's a good definition of rich, where I come from, in my country. But yes, it should be more. And it will be, if we can only hang on and maintain our progress.
Our wealth has been doubling every 10 years or so. ( 7.2% growth per year by the rule of 72 ) $147 Trillion is about $1.1 million per household, so it is not as extreme as it sounds at first.
But first we have to reset this whole conversation, loudly I think, and realize and claim and proclaim at least the fundamental, foundational, financial facts of our national situation, and demand that our representatives start acting like it -- or change those representatives! Soon! We need for them to invest in our country, as Bernie and Joe and Elizabeth and Nancy and so many others in Congress planned, and even *passed* the big infrastructure bill, the best one, blocked by all Rs and 2 Dems.
If we pay a working family a dollar, a rich guy gets it almost immediately. So rich guys should be spending all of their time putting people to work. Don't see it, so it's up to us, the 90% and even the 99%. There's a lot of work that needs doing -- we all know it, we can see it everywhere we go, and in all the reporting that is still getting done, somehow, every day.
But if the federal debt is so bad, we could pay it, tomorrow! Let's hear that on the floor of the Senate and the House, instead of the disgusting competition to make the most sniveling obsequious obeisances to the Feudalist Society. Simple. 'Pay it!' ( In fact, Treasuries don't work that way, and probably shouldn't, but the statement makes the point, for me . . . )
thanks again, hope this made sense and supports your mission! -- cheers, b.rad
Hmmm . . . What numbers are you referring to? My long comment did not mention or rely on revenue at all — b.rad
I'm with you, Jess. They are careless people in the Republican Party. I think that the author of The Great Gatsby had two meanings in mind when he included that word in his indictment of his characters: careless as in thoughtless about whether what they did would cause pain and careless as in without a conscience, without empathy for other humans because they really don't care about what pain they caused. We are watching the making of fascists who will participate in anything their sick political party leaders advocate and who will like what they're doing as they do it.
Let’s not forget an “extension” of Betsy DeVos making a mess, not just here, but abroad in foreign countries. Her brother Eric “Blackwater” Prince has made his mark of fuckery by destroying humanity as well. Prince. What an appropriate and sanctimonious sir name to cradle such destructive behavior. The pride that must be carried in that family can only be equaled by the self-preserving lies used to cover up their actions, but isn’t that the Merican way?
I met Betsy DeVos. There are only two other times I can remember my blood running cold after making eye contact with satan incarnate…meeting Rick Scott and Don Rumsfeld.
Our country has a long and distinguished history of being in the shitter. Maddow’s book prequel illustrates that very well. Being the pessimistic optimist I am though, not sure we are going to recover from this one.
We will see…fortunately there are people like Jess who are more hopeful than I.
☮️🇺🇸🇵🇸🇮🇱☯️
Thanks for affirming that in person meeting of infamous Betsy de Vos made your blood run cold, and the chilling awareness of no soul behind the empty eyes, being in presence of evil. Even without meeting her, it was radiating from her photos, film via tv interviews, words in print also gave chills. Her brother, a creepy darkness of the underworld also.
This is what the wealthy have always done. The French came up with a novel solution...
One would think he was a Supreme Court justice😟